The Worship Of Monkeys

Bandar ke haath mein talwar – these words come to mind when reading the top stories in the news today: The Sword is in the hands of a Monkey.

Indeed, monkeys, our closest cousins, make for an interesting case towards a better understanding of human morality. Note that monkeys cannot trade – they only steal whatever they want. Snatch and grab is their only recourse. Now contrast them with humans – who buy bananas, and everything else – and you will arrive at conclusions very different from Thomas Hobbes (of Leviathan fame) who, it must be noted, never saw a monkey in his life.

If we contrast humans and monkeys, we note that there is a “natural order” in the affairs of humans because we are “rule-following animals.” And the rule is this:

Possession Indicates Property.

We buy and sell all through our lives without resorting to any “paperwork,” only because of this Golden Rule. When I give Parimal a hundred rupees for 5 packs of Silk Cut, and he hands the same over to me, Property has changed hands, Parimal is now the owner of the State note, and I am the owner of the cigarettes. And everyone in the bazaar agrees that we have treated each other with Justice, and that the exchange of properties was legitimate. The new pattern of ownership is accepted as legitimate by all.

Because they cannot trade, monkeys are lawless. So if monkeys took to the sword, mayhem would ensue. And it has:

Item #1: Raj Thuggeray issuing notice to the State Bank of India that they must hire Marathi manoos as clerks. This is blatant misuse of the talwar, whose purpose is to see that fair competition prevails, that all candidates for clerkship compete fairly with each other, so that SBI hires the best.

Once again, there is this difference in political philosophy: We idealize a world where FORCE is minimized, and used only according to The Law. People like Thuggeray believe precisely in the misuse of force, on coercion. Yet, they are “recognized” as politicians heading political parties. We are not. Funny old world.

Item #2: The story of the grabbing of tribal lands rich in iron ore by the Tatas and the Essar Group. Here the precise rule being violated is that which we observe in all our markets: Possession Indicates Property. Once again, those who are wielding the Sword of State are acting like lawless monkeys.

What do we do?

I recall many a stay in Koppa, a small village on the outskirts of Bangalore, where I used to hold seminars for students. Here, monkeys were a huge menace. They would raid the dining hall. They would raid our rooms. Indeed, my own room was raided once.

One day, I took a walk through Koppa just to check out the place. There was only one temple they had. It was dedicated to the Monkey God – Hanuman.

I found it rather strange that it was precisely where monkeys are a nuisance that the people worship the Monkey God.

On Our Original Chacha... And Poona Today

The newspapers today are all full of Nehru – today is the 120th birth anniversary of our Original Chacha. Mint has many articles on the man and quite a few great photos too. I suggest you buy a copy. The Times of India, oddly enough, has many State advertisements – including one paid for by the ministry of steel, on which they quote Nehru’s vision of a State that also makes Steel – or should it be “Steal”?

Anyway, this day is also celebrated as Children’s Day – for legend has it that the Original Chacha loved all his bhateejas and bhateejis – us. Yet, when a loving bhateeja like me finally acquired the wisdom to reassess the man, he was forced to conclude that Chacha Nehru was EVIL. Read that historic article here.

Actually, it was Bastiat who really loved the young. His preface to Economic Harmonies is titled “To The Youth” – and this essay is the first in my The Essential Frederic Bastiat: free download here. The essay begins thus:

Eagerness to learn, the need to believe in something, minds still immune to age-old prejudices, hearts untouched by hatred, zeal for worthy causes, ardent affections, unselfishness, loyalty, good faith, enthusiasm for all that is good, beautiful, sincere, great, wholesome, and spiritual—such are the priceless gifts of youth. That is why I dedicate this book to the youth.

So read Bastiat and don’t read Chacha’s books at all.

And talking about the youth, I must report the horrific tale of what happened as I surfed the ToI website this morning. There is a feature on the homepage called “Cities” where you can choose the city you want and obtain news of happenings there. After looking around here and there, I finally clicked on Pune. And the first item on the list, written in bold letters, was this:

Two killed in road mishap

I was immediately taken back to the few months I spent in Pune some years ago. Not a single day passed without a report of some people, usually motorcyclists, usually young, getting killed on the roads. This happened EVERY SINGLE DAY for a few months.

I recall meeting a retired general who once headed the Armed Forces’ Medical College, which is located in Pune. He told me that a large percentage of his students suffered road accidents when they drove into town, usually on two-wheelers. He joked that it was probably safer to go to war than go to Main Street.

I recall a bus ride from Pune to Mumbai during which my fellow-passenger was a young sardarji from Jalandhar who was in Pune to study something or the other. When quizzed by me about road accidents, he related an eerie tale. He said that whenever a student died his college used to observe a holiday. But now that deaths are so frequent, they merely observe a minute’s silence.

Get it?

And Pune is supposed to be a "student town"!

All I Wanna Say Is That They Don’t Really Care About Us.

So don’t fall for all this Chacha-Bhateeja-Children’s Day nonsense.

Our The State actually hates you.

Which is why they call you The Population Problem.

On Their "Leave This Place Or I Shoot" Theory Of Society

There are two items in the news today pertaining to our indigenous tribal forest dwellers. The first says that they are to be moved out of their homelands to make space for The Tiger. An incentive of Rs. 100,000 is being offered – but not all want to move out.

This is a recurrent theme in socialist India: people have to physically move homes and hearths for the greater common good. During the Partition, my own people had to shift from East to West Bengal – for “democracy,” I presume. Or was it for majoritarianism? Or even “hindootva”? I wonder. In exactly the same way, millions moved from West Punjab and Sind. And millions moved the other way. And after all this mass movement, the greater common good still eludes us.

Indigenous tribal communities have had a bad time under The Socialist Chacha State because their great Constitution, which does not recognize Private Property as absolute, abets “legal plunder” – as in the case of “nationalization.” These tribals have been asked to move out of their homelands for various reasons ranging from saving The Tiger, to building dams, to quarrying, and so on. This must end. Property must rule.

However, Chacha is going the other way. There is news that says The Chacha State is declaring perpetual war against our forest-dwellers. A report in HT today says that 60,000 armed State policemen are to be unleashed upon the tribals of Bastar. The report is titled “Tribal Bastar prepares for War.” This bit from the report tells of the enormity of the task:

Bastar, 10 times the size of Kashmir Valley, includes the Maoists’ liberated zone — the sprawling, out-of-bounds 4,000 sq km expanse called Abujhmarh (the unknown forest).

What is also worth noting is this remark of the commander-in-chief of these operations:

“Five years,” said Vishwa Ranjan, Chhattisgarh’s director-general of police. “In five years, they will have to leave this area.”

“Leave this area?”

For what? So that State licensees can plunder their mineral-rich lands?

And 5 years of internal war?

I suggest an immediate and unilateral recognition of Property – on the part of the Chacha State. I suggest “political” solutions to this uprising. I oppose this internal war. And, most importantly, I must add that I do not think our poor, ill-equipped constables should be sacrificed thus, at the altar of The Chacha State. This is a political problem that needs politicians to solve, not policemen. But none at the Centre are “politicians” in any sense of the word, are they?

Democracy without politics?

Ha ha. What a JOKE!

On Their Top Professor... And Second-Class Citizens

Thanks to Hayek Order providing the link, we have the Swaminathan Aiyar-Jean Dreze debate on the NREGA (rural workfare scheme) – the Flagship of the Chacha State – as the first topic on our agenda this misty morning.

Although Aiyar concludes against this corrupt idea, nowhere does he use the term “economic freedom.” Both of them concur that the “Tamil Nadu model” is best, where good roads have made villages into towns. Yet, neither talk of aggressive urbanization as a solution to poverty; indeed, nowhere do they talk of Property for the urban poor. Their entire focus is on the rural poor. A village-centred idea of poverty removal – via The State. In the meantime, villagers are moving in hordes to our cities, where they get fucked by the cops, the municipal authorities and all the other parasites – and end up living in slums without titles to their Property.

What I would like to draw my reader’s attention to is the following extract from Jean Dreze, who is, I believe, Professor Emeritus of Delhi University. He says:

State governments now have an incentive to maximise labour intensity, because the government of India pays for all the wages, but only part of the material costs. And climate change may increase the value of labour-intensive environmental protection works. So, there may be lots of hidden possibilities here.

The man is a Luddite. He champions “labour-intensive” workfare – which means more labour and less capital, so lower productivity and lower wages. And all this at State cost. The man is nutts. And he’s a climate change wallah too. And he’s the State’s top professor. Now do you see why I advise all our youth to drop out of this State Education System?

Next: I would also like to draw my reader’s attention to a news report that says the Orissa government has shut down 64 mines. There seems to be something seriously wrong with the mining sector in India – and the only cure is Property. And this is also the only Law that will deliver Justice to poor rural- and forest-folk who should be the real owners of their mineral-rich lands, and are now turning to Naxalism. I have an earlier post on mining.

Anyway, I do not just surf the web to find interesting things to write about for my reader’s enjoyment; I also surf the city. This morning, I discovered a huge market inside my nearest slum, Govindpuri. From the main road, where I was parked, you cannot see a single shop. But once you step inside, and walk down the extremely narrow pathway, there are shops, shops, and more shops. Someone told me there are over 150 shops – excluding the fish market. I found a music CD shop, and also a VCD DVD shop. There was a barber shop, a sweet shop, some “general stores,” a shop selling cloth. All kinds of little, little shops, in a place where all have little, little rooms to live in. I made inquiries about the cost of these shops, and was told that “property” on this hidden “main street” went for over 200,000 rupees. I advised the people to develop their own Property title system. Perhaps they do have something like that already – for these properties are bought and sold, and rented.

I am back home now, and here we have roads, property titles, sewage lines – and I hate it. I do not believe in cities where over half the population are second-class citizens. There is enough unowned land around Delhi for all these people. If this land was colonized, property prices would fall, for the benefit of the poor.

I too have the interests of the poor at heart. I too go to their slums to actually see things for myself. And my prescription varies significantly from that of the State’s Professor Emeritus:

My prescription is Aggressive Urbanization powered by good roads; colonization of land around cities for the urban poor; Property titles; sound money; free trade; and total economic freedom – the “system of natural liberty.”

Alternative Nation

Today, let us discuss the great “conflict of visions” between The Chacha State and those who believe in Liberty.

The Chacha State’s vision, a Gandhian one, is of an India comprising hundreds of thousands of “self-sufficient village republics.”

Our vision is that of hundreds of free-trading cities, and thousands of such towns – all self-governing, of course.

Today, there is a small report in Mint titled “India needs hundreds of new cities” – on a panel discussion that transpired during their recent “economic summit.” The report discusses problems developers face – particularly in buying land. I wonder why no one talked about homesteading unowned land.

To add to what the report says, I would like to emphasize transportation, particularly roads. In British India, they built 80 “hill-stations” in 50 years only by understanding the “natural patters” that occur in society. One such pattern is “hubs-and-spokes.” Thus, their hill-stations were laid out on “spokes” extending from the great metropolitian cities – the “hubs.”

So you see Poona, Mahabaleshwar, Matheran, Panchgani, Lonavla, etc. built upon spokes extending from Bombay. Ditto for Darjeeling and Shillong, and Calcutta. From Delhi, spokes were built to Simla, Mussoorie and others; from Madras, there were spokes to Ooty and Kodaikanal. Without these transport connections to the big cities, small towns, or brand new cities, cannot succeed.

In those days, the automobile had not been invented – but the steam locomotive had. The British connected their hill-stations to their cities by rail. You can still see these mountain railways working in Simla, in Darjeeling, and in the Nilgiris. Matheran, which I have yet to visit, had no road connection at all, and it is only recently that its toy train stopped working.

If we are to build successful new cities we must focus on transportation from the existing metros – the hubs of Indian commerce. Even if 20 spokes are built – both rail and road – leading out from each of these hubs, connecting all the existing satellite towns, and also all the “new cities,” the urban scenario in India will be dramatically improved.

Stanmore was the first “ribbon housing” development in London after WWII. It succeeded because the London Underground’s Jubilee Line was extended there – overland, of course. I visited Stanmore just to check – and it is a spaciously laid out new town. But the people living there would never have done so if the direct and fast connection to The City did not exist.

Yeah, we need property titles. But we also need to focus on transportation. Without that, we are doomed. Roads, railways, tramways – the lot.

Further, with free trade, our coastline will urbanize aggressively. We will need twin coastal expressways.

Note that The Chacha State has still not considered "hubs-and-spokes," nor thought of coastal expressways. Their much touted and long delayed "Golden Quadrilateral" is a mere 5-city vision, connecting the 5 overcrowded metros. Chacha possesses no urban vision.

To conclude, some words on “rural development,” the great Gandhian chimera. We have chased this bleak vision for 60 years – this, while millions of villagers have moved to cities, and all these neglected cities have become hell-holes. We even destroyed all the hill-stations.

The records state that the Congress pursued “rural development” even in British times, when they came to occupy ministries after the GoI Act of 1935. Philip Mason was a District Magistrate in Dehra Doon then. This is what ICS officers like him thought of this nonsensical idea:

As to Rural Development, most British officers would have agreed that a great deal of what was proposed was admirable if the villagers would do it themselves, but they were skeptical about trying to change habits from above – and much of the effort put into the attempt seemed to them wasteful and incompetent.

This charade of “rural development” has to end.

The new vision must be of 500 Hong Kongs, Dubais, Singapores…. And thousands and thousands of Stanmores.

Let us not only live better, in excellent urban environs, let us also own great properties, and make the whole of India a great piece of real estate. The beauty of nature is everywhere – a free gift – but all our man-made cities and towns are ugly beyond belief. At fault is their vision. This false vision must be ditched.

For Liberty, Against Democracy

A bumper sticker Scott Horton sent me reads:

“Bad Criminals Go To Jail, The Best Go To Washington.”

It was shortly after enjoying a great laugh these stickers gave me that I read the news about how MNS chauvinists roughed up an MLA for taking his oath in Hindi. The headline in the Times of India is noteworthy:

MNS lawmakers turn into lawbreakers in Assembly

The philosopher to blame for this is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who exalted the legislator to incredible heights. He is the man who founded the idea of a “general will.” And the “social contract.” Observing the conduct of actual legislators, that too within their “august house,” should make us all skeptical of “democracy.”

[Bastiat took Rousseau apart in “The Law.” You can read “The Law” here.]

In particular, this incident, which is certainly not the first of its kind, should make us doubt legislation as well. We should arrive at an understanding that “Law” and “legislation” are different things, with different purposes. We must not equate man-made legislation with law – something that comes from the past. We must doubt “positive law” – precisely that which is created by legislators: “law that is legally made.” We can then live in a “private law” world governed by Property, Contracts and Torts. If we treat all criminal acts as Torts (as the ancients did) – then we can live in peace and harmony – and Law – without any State interference at all. Legislators only make “public law” – that which is binding on the personnel of The State, whose budgets and policies come under their purview. This would be the “rule of law” – when The State is under the law. Today, their minions are above the law. And then they claim legitimacy to make law!

Getting back to the happenings in Mumbai, all I can add is that this is NOT “politics” – a word born in Ancient Athens. What makes for real politics is a “recognition of restraints.” What the MNS is doing is better called “rowdyism.” It is interesting that the Election Commission “recognizes” the MNS as a genuine “political party” and allots them a “symbol” for using in their “politics.” Raj Thuggeray gets Z Category VVIP security from The Chacha Sate – to protect him from his many enemies. However, the same Chacha State’s judiciary refuses to entertain the plea of SV Raju & Co. to set up a liberal party. This PIL has been pending before the Bombay High Court for over a decade now.

So far, we have concluded that this incident in an august assembly reflects poorly on democracy, on legislation, on politics, and on our recognized political parties. Let us now take the discussions a little further – to “political ideals.” Indeed, all political parties are supposedly different because they subscribe to different ideals.

In socialist Chacha State India, not a single party possesses any political ideal. The Congress is just a bunch of sycophants swarming around a Gandhi, milking the budget, milking the PSUs, milking the banks, etc. The BJP is not “political” because they do not exhibit the “recognition of restraints” so vital to real politics. The CPI(M), I am sure, is no longer faithful to the political ideals of Karl Marx. And the rest of the parties are, like the MNS, just rowdy and corrupt gangs led by some big goonda under State protection.

Do you still call this “democracy”?

I prefer Liberty.

Grant Them Liberty

Let us stay focused on the Maoist-Naxalite uprising, this sudden civil war. There is news of fresh violence – the killing of 4 more cops. This report also quotes the Maoist leader, Kishanji, as saying: “…the war is on. We will win the war. Let the Centre deploy as many forces they want,"

There is another news report on what West Bengal’s communist chief minister, buddhudeb, had to say, for these cops were killed shortly after his 2-day visit to West Midnapore, the district where all the rebel action is. He wants to “target Maoists at full-tilt and push ahead with development projects in the tribal belt.” This is the famous “carrot & stick” the editors of the Times of India recently advocated. I had discussed the errors in such thinking in this post.

What is worth noting is this para from the ToI report today:

On the second day of his visit to Midnapore, Bhattacharjee on Sunday prepared ‘‘a blueprint for offensive’’ with senior officials of the Maoist-affected districts of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura, ruling out any talks till they drop arms.

Actually, all these “senior officials” have lost their civic authority long ago. Some years back, maybe a decade ago, I met an IAS officer who served as District Magistrate in one of these places. He told me that his writ did not run beyond the gates of his colonial bungalow. There has been a complete breakdown in the civil administration. And what is buddhudeb’s solution?:

NO TALKS.

Just ask the State cops to shoot the fuckers, and dole out more and more of our money to the DMs to spend on “development.”

What an idea, Sirjee.

This is a repeat of Kashmir, of Manipur.

Perpetual internal wars.

And note that the scandal over the Jharkhand CM’s corruption involved mining licenses – once again a negation of Property. Jharkhand is where a police inspector was beheaded. I discussed mining here.

How does the average adivasi view the police? My uncle once told me the story of how he had a tough time obtaining mahua in one of these jungles – because, seeing his big, burly frame, all the forest-dwellers mistook him for a cop. Mahua is a spirit distilled from a jungle flower of the same name. It is an excellent drink. It is illegal – and the only economic activity allowed is mining, for which State cops are used to take over tribal lands.

Cops are not liked too much in these forests. And as for forest guards, the less said the better. Of course, cops are not liked too much in Delhi either.

There comes a time when a huge big State loses its legitimacy completely. This is one such moment. Things have come to such a sorry pass only because the personnel of our The State have persisted in doing wrong things, thinking the people will never revolt. Hubris.

I suggest that Kishanji instruct buddhudeb to withdraw ALL his forces and the ENTIRE district administration from West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia. Let these districts be free so that the people can set up their own institutions of local self-government.

Self-rule will bring about peace, and without peace The Market cannot function, so no “development” can ever be possible in a war zone. Keep that in mind. Also note that there cannot be a “civil government” unless the natural order prevails, for such a government exists only to “maintain the peace,” not to “establish” it. That is the task of “politics” – but then I repeat myself.